Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below:
Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
On May 11, 2011, I emailed to this above address and I got this email back from Senator Pryor’s office:
Please note, this is not a monitored email account. Due to the sheer volume of correspondence I receive, I ask that constituents please contact me via my website with any responses or additional concerns. If you would like a specific reply to your message, please visit http://pryor.senate.gov/contact. This system ensures that I will continue to keep Arkansas First by allowing me to better organize the thousands of emails I get from Arkansans each week and ensuring that I have all the information I need to respond to your particular communication in timely manner. I appreciate you writing. I always welcome your input and suggestions. Please do not hesitate to contact me on any issue of concern to you in the future.
Government auditors spent the past five years examining all federal programs and found that 22 percent of them—costing taxpayers a total of $123 billion annually—fail to show any positive impact on the populations they serve.
Congress has ignored efficiency recommendations from the Department of Health and Human Services that would save $9 billionannually.
Taxpayers are funding paintings of high-ranking government officials at a cost of up to $50,000 apiece.
The state of Washington sent $1 food stamp checks to 250,000 households in order to raise state caseload figures and trigger $43 millionin additional federal funds.
Suburban families are receiving large farm subsidies for the grass in their backyards—subsidies that many of these families never requested and do not want.
Homeland Security employee purchases include 63-inch plasma TVs, iPods, and $230for a beer brewing kit.
The National Institutes of Health spends $1.3 millionper month to rent a lab that it cannot use.
Congress recently spent $2.4 billionon 10 new jets that the Pentagon insists it does not need and will not use.
Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times Blog is very fond of quoting Paul Krugman concerning his view that the worst thing we could do now is cut federal spending. However, federal spending doesn’t work to pull us out of a recession.
Despite ongoing federal deficits of more than $1 trillion a year, many liberals are calling for more government spending to “create jobs.” At the same time, liberals are opposing budget cuts because that would supposedly hurt the economic recovery. And then there is the perennial problem of Democrats and Republicans defending spending on their particular favored programs.
With all these forces arrayed against budget sanity, it’s time to take a back-to-basics look at the role of government spending in the economy.
Federal spending has soared over the past decade. As a share of gross domestic product, spending grew from 18 percent in 2001 to 24 percent in 2011. The causes of this expansion include the costs of wars, growing entitlement programs, the 2009 stimulus bill and rising spending on discretionary programs such as education.
The reality is that Washington is very bad at trying to micromanage short-term economic performance.
New projections from the Congressional Budget Office show that without reforms spending will keep rising for decades to come. The CBO’s “alternative fiscal scenario” shows spending growing to 34 percent of GDP by 2035. Thus, the federal government is on course to gobble up almost twice as much of the U.S. economy 24 years from now as it did just a decade ago.
America is becoming a big-government nation
Sadly, America is rapidly becoming a big-government nation. Data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development compares spending by all levels of government among its 31 high-income member countries. This year, government spending in the United States hit 41 percent of GDP, meaning that more than 4 out of every 10 dollars that we produce is consumed by our federal, state and local governments.
We used to have a substantial government size advantage compared to other countries. But Figure 1 shows that while government spending in the United States was about 10 percentage points of GDP smaller than the average OECD country in the past, that gap has now shrunk to just 4 points. A number of high-income nations — such as Australia — now have smaller governments than does the United States.
This is very troubling because America’s strong growth and high living standards were historically built on our relatively small government. The ongoing surge in federal spending is undoing this competitive advantage that we have enjoyed in the world economy.
CBO projections show that federal spending will rise by about 10 percentage points of GDP between now and 2035. If that happens, governments in the United States will be grabbing more than half of everything produced in the nation by that year. That would doom future generations of Americans to unbearable levels of taxation and a stagnant economy with fewer opportunities.
Government spending doesn’t stimulate
There is renewed talk in Washington about further spending measures to try and stimulate the weak economy. That idea is remarkably naïve and misguided. It is now more than two years after passage of the $821 billion stimulus package in 2009, and it is obvious that that effort was a hugely expensive Keynesian policy failure.
The Obama administration’s attempt to pump up “aggregate demand” in the economy simply hasn’t worked. In Keynesian theory, the total amount of deficit spending is the amount of “stimulus” delivered to the economy. Well, we’ve had deficit spending of $459 billion in 2008, $1.4 trillion in 2009, $1.3 trillion in 2010 and $1.4 trillion in 2011.
Yet despite that enormous deficit-spending stimulus, U.S. unemployment remains stuck at more than 9 percent and the recovery is very sluggish compared to prior recoveries. Indeed, the current recovery appears to be slower than any since World War II, according to a recent Joint Economic Committee study.
Obama administration economists had claimed that the Keynesian “multipliers” from government spending are large, meaning that spending would give a big boost to GDP. But other economists have found that Keynesian multipliers are actually quite small, meaning that added government spending mainly just displaces private-sector activities. Stanford University economist John Taylor took a detailed look at GDP data over recent years, and he found little evidence of any benefits from the 2009 stimulus bill. Any “sugar high” to the economy from recent increases in government spending was at best very small and short-lived.
The reality is that Washington is very bad at trying to micromanage short-term economic performance. Its failed stimulus actions have just put the nation further into debt, which will harm our long-term prosperity. Harvard University’s Robert Barro calculated that any short-term benefit that the 2009 stimulus bill may have provided is greatly outweighed by the future damage caused by higher taxes and debt.
The government’s leaky bucket
Let’s take a look at how government spending damages the economy over the long run. Spending is financed by the extraction of resources from current and future taxpayers. The resources consumed by the government cannot be used to produce goods in the private marketplace. For example, the engineers needed to build a $10 billion government high-speed rail line are taken away from building other products in the economy. The $10 billion rail line creates government-connected jobs, but it also kills at least $10 billion worth of private jobs.
Indeed, the private sector would actually lose more than $10 billion in this example. That is because government spending and taxing creates “deadweight losses,” which result from distortions to working, investment and other activities. The CBO says that deadweight loss estimates “range from 20 cents to 60 cents over and above the revenue raised.” Harvard University’s Martin Feldstein thinks that deadweight losses “may exceed one dollar per dollar of revenue raised, making the cost of incremental governmental spending more than two dollars for each dollar of government spending.” Thus, a $10 billion high-speed rail line would cost the private economy $20 billion or more.
The government uses a “leaky bucket” when it tries to help the economy. Former chairman of the Council of Economics Advisors, Michael Boskin, explains: “The cost to the economy of each additional tax dollar is about $1.40 to $1.50. Now that tax dollar … is put into a bucket. Some of it leaks out in overhead, waste and so on. In a well-managed program, the government may spend 80 or 90 cents of that dollar on achieving its goals. Inefficient programs would be much lower, $0.30 or $0.40 on the dollar.” Texas A&M economist Edgar Browning comes to similar conclusions about the magnitude of the government’s leaky bucket: “It costs taxpayers $3 to provide a benefit worth $1 to recipients.”
The larger the government grows, the leakier the bucket becomes. On the revenue side, tax distortions rise rapidly as tax rates rise. On the spending side, funding is allocated to activities with ever lower returns as the government expands. Figure 2 illustrates the consequences of the leaky bucket. On the left-hand side, tax rates are low and the government initially delivers useful public goods such as crime reduction. Those activities create high returns, so per-capita incomes initially rise as the government grows.
As the government expands further, it engages in less productive activities. The marginal return from government spending falls and then turns negative. On the right-hand side of the figure, average incomes fall as the government expands. Government in the United States — at more than 40 percent of GDP — is almost certainly on the right-hand side of this figure.
In his 2008 book, Stealing from Ourselves, Professor Browning concludes that today’s welfare state reduces GDP — or average U.S. incomes — by about 25 percent. That would place us quite far to the right in Figure 2, and it suggests that federal spending cuts would substantially increase U.S. incomes over time.
All the official projections show rivers of red ink for years to come unless federal policymakers enact major budget reforms. Unless spending is cut, the United States is headed for economic ruin. We need to cut entitlements, domestic discretionary programs and defense spending, as Cato has detailed at http://www.DownsizingGovernment.org.
Cutting spending would boost the economy because many federal programs have very low or negative returns. Many programs cause severe economic distortions. Other programs damage the environment and restrict individual freedom. And the federal government has expanded into hundreds of areas that would be better left to state and local governments, businesses, charities and individuals.
With the upcoming debt-limit vote, fiscal conservatives in Congress have a real chance to start turning the tide. If they don’t stick to their guns, the “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” we celebrate this July 4 will become meaningless as Washington usurps an ever larger share of our incomes and our economy
Amy Winehouse died at the young age of 27 and she had lived a life filled with drug and alcohol addiction. This series on Papa Roach is meant to provide answers to those who feel trapped. Hopefully it will people to avoid troubles like Amy Winehouse experienced.
Today I am starting a series of posts on this song “The Last Resort” by Papa Roach.
The band’s place in the pop music landscape was established with the release of their breakout single, “Last Resort,” which was quickly picked up by MTV and nominated for a “Best New Artist Video” award at the 2000 Video Music Awards. The song is a gut-wrenching first-person chronicle of hopelessness that’s gone so deep the singer is seriously contemplating suicide. For casual listeners, the song is very confusing. Listening to the song reveals the criticisms claiming the song promotes suicide could certainly be warranted. Kids who are riding the fence because of numerous other problems in their lives could interpret the song in a way that would give them permission to go over the edge, especially if they don’t know the story behind the song.
But the band is adamant about the fact that the song is about fighting to survive by overcoming depression, rather than allowing it to lead to suicide. “It’s not saying I can’t go on living. It’s saying I can’t go on living this way,” says Dick (Spin, 10/00). He also says, “Last Resort” has “a positive edge to it, as far as like, ‘Don’t succumb to it. Keep yourself afloat.’ With these problems in your life, find a friend you can confide in” (Sonicnet.com).
I know there are some curse words in the following song. I have eliminated both times the curse word is used. I really think that there needs to be a response to the young people who are saying things like the words in this song Here are some of the words:
Do you even care if I die pleading, Would it be wrong, would it be right, If I took my life tonight, Chances are that I might, and I’m contimplating suicide, ‘Cause I’m losing my sight, losing my mind, Wish somebody would tell me I’m fine, Nothing’s alright, nothing is fine, I’m running and I’m crying, I never realized I was spread too thin, Till it was too late andI was empty within, Hungry, feeding on my chaos and living in sin, Downward spiral, where do i begin, It all started when i lost my mother, No love for myself and no love for another,Searching to find a love upon a higher level, finding nothing but QUESTIONS AND DEVILS, I can’t go on living this way, Cut my life into pieces, This is my last resort.
Twenty years ago I lived in Florida. The sun was always bright. The air was always warm. The ocean water was always blue. The tropical flowers were always beautiful. And my apartment was always home to an army of Palmetto bugs that somehow managed to survive visits from the exterminator and frequent fumigations. There were three other things I learned about these critters when I lived down south. First, everyone had them in their houses. Second, calling them “Palmetto bugs” was just a nice way of forgetting that the indestructible bugs were really nothing more than roaches. And third, there was really nothing you could do to get rid of them.
For a home-owner, the roach population’s ability to live and thrive even after being targeted for destruction is a nightmare. To kids who have experienced the chaos of relational upheaval in today’s confusing, selfish and oft-hopeless culture, the indestructible longevity of a roach can become an admirable quality.
Jacoby Shaddix is a young man whose difficult background left him close to hopeless and hanging on to life by a thread. Now 24 years old and known as Coby Dick, he’s the lead singer of the band named Papa Roach. While the name was originally taken from Shaddix’s Grandpa Roatch, there’s more to it than meets the eye. “We look at ourselves like cockroaches,” says Dick. “We’re survivors” (Rolling Stone,8/31/00). Judging from the band’s recent rise to mainstream music popularity, Dick and his bandmates are putting forth a message that’s resonating with a youth culture hoping to survive like indestructible roaches in a world seemingly bent on destroying their youthful hopes and dreams.
Turn on your radio and/or MTV and it won’t be long until you realize the music and message of Papa Roach has connected with today’s mainstream youth culture. What is it that’s made them connect with so many young ears, eyes, minds and hearts? What’s the message and worldview communicated in and through the music of Papa Roach? Is there anything we can learn from their growing influence among our kids? As with all other popular music, there’s more to Papa Roach than meets the ear. We need to dig deeper to look beneath the band’s lyrics and music to discover who they are and how that identity has facilitated their growing connection with kids. Looking more deeply at the Papa Roach history, music and appeal offers deep insight into the collective and individual values, attitudes and behaviors of today’s children and teens.
Papa Roach’s Story
The roots of Papa Roach go back to Vacaville, a small town in California where the kids say there’s little or nothing to do. Like so many other kids in Vacaville, Coby Dick says he was “a wild kid” (Rolling Stone, 7/6-20/2000). When he describes his “rough” childhood he talks openly about his hyperactivity, mood swings and bed-wetting until the age of 16. When Dick was barely into his middle school years, his father left home and didn’t speak to him for 12 years—and only after Dick called his dad while writing the band’s current album, Infest.
Always interested in music, Dick became proficient on the bass clarinet and played in an award-winning woodwind ensemble while in high school. By the age of 17, Dick had left home to live on his own in a rented room while making money as a dishwasher. When he was 19, he decided to deal with his personal issues by writing his life down in the form of lyrics as “a way to vent frustrations with things that’ve happened in my life. This is the perfect way for me to get some things off my mind and come to peace with certain situations” (Alternative Press, 10/00). Dick wears the chaos on his left bicep where there’s a tattoo of a house engulfed in flames. “It’s a representation of my family falling to pieces” (Spin, 10/00). Today, Coby Dick is the band’s lead singer, lyricist and songwriter. The music of Papa Roach reflects his thoughts on the first 24 years of his young life.
Drummer David Buckner (age 24) hooked up with Dick in 1993 when they were playing football together back inVacaville. An accomplished violinist, Buckner opened his family’s garage for the band’s original rehearsals. At that time, the band consisted of Dick, Buckner, bass player Will James and a trombone player. They made their performance debut at a high school talent show.
After a short time they canned the trombone player and added guitarist Jerry Horton (age 25). To this day, Horton doesn’t fit the stereotype of a rock and roll musician. He remains committed to being “straight-edge,” a moniker describing his decision to never take drugs, never smoke and never use alcohol. His bandmates claim they’ve never heard him use profanity.
During the early years, the band played club shows, and handed out a series of self-released EPs and demos on the street. They released Potatoes For Christmas (1994) and Coca Bonita (1995) before Will James left the band because his ongoing involvement in a church camp kept the band from practicing over the summer months. Their local following grew and they hired their roadie Tobin Esperance (age 20) in 1996 to replace James.
The band self-released two more albums: Old Friends From Young Years … Let ‘Em Know (1997) and Five Tracks Deep (1998), the latter of which convinced the folks at Warner Brothers to finance a demo record for Papa Roach. But in a strange turn of events, Warner Brothers abruptly dropped plans for the band as they were rejected by several record labels. Then in October 1999, the band signed on with Dreamworks.
In the months since then, Papa Roach released an album, joined the Summer of 2000 Vans’ Warped Tour, and has toured with Korn.
For more information on resources to help you understand today’s rapidly changing youth culture, contact the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding.
Are you having suicidal thoughts and feelings? Perhaps you are convinced that life is not worth living. You feel like your world is collapsing in on you. Your life seems hopeless—like a black hole with all love, hope, and joy sucked out. If you are contemplating suicide, you have already done a lot of thinking about your life.
But have you thought about how God views your life?
Right now you are living in a world of despair. You can’t see any solution to your problems. You’re not looking forward to anything. The future seems empty.
God’s perspective on your life is very different. Your life is precious to Him. He knows everything about you—even how many hairs are on your head (Matthew 10:30). Your life is so significant to Him that He forbids you to take it. God says that all murder is wrong, and that includes the self-murder of suicide (Exodus 20:13).
Bring your hopelessness to God
God is not surprised or put off by your hopeless feelings. He wants you to bring your despair to Him, and cry for help right now, in the middle of your darkness and pain. Throughout history God’s children have cried to him and He has helped them. Listen to the voice of David who cried out his despair to God thousands of years ago, “In the day of my trouble I call upon you, for you answer me” (Psalm 86:7).
Today is your day of trouble. Tell God all your sorrows, all your troubles, and all the reasons suicide is on your mind. Do you feel, like David, that you are in the “depths of the grave”? Ask God to hear your prayer and listen to your cry for grace (Psalm 86:6). On this day the living God promises to listen to you and help you.
Your reasons for despair; God’s voice of hope
Why are you feeling hopeless? Are you struggling with physical suffering? A broken relationship? Shame and guilt from mistakes and failures? An unrealized dream? What problem do you believe suicide will solve?
Your suicidal feelings and actions don’t come out of the blue. They have reasons you can discover and understand. Your particular reasons will show you how you’re experiencing, interpreting, and reacting to your world. When you discover your reasons, you will also be describing what is most important to you. The loss or pain that makes you feel like your life is not worth living points to the thing that you believe would make your life worth living.
We will look at four kinds of reasons for hopelessness. As you read, look for the specific reasons you are feeling hopeless. And then listen to what God says to you about your particular troubles that brings hope.
1. Unrelenting suffering.Your hopelessness might stem from overwhelming suffering. The death of someone close to you, your own chronic pain and illness, postpartum depression, a broken relationship, poverty, racial prejudice, etc., are all situations that can fill you with despair.
If this is why you feel hopeless, read through Psalm 31. Written by David, these words vividly capture the feeling of wasting away with grief.
Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am in distress;
my eye is wasted from grief;
my soul and my body also.
For my life is spent with sorrow,
and my years with sighing;(v. 9-10)
Is this what your life is like?
But this psalm is also filled with hope. David remembers that God sees him in his affliction and knows all about his troubles. He remembers that in God’s presence he is safe:
Oh, how abundant is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you and worked for those who take refuge in you, in the sight of the children of mankind! In the cover of your presence you hide them from the plots of men; you store them in your shelter from the strife of tongues.”(v. 19-20)
David’s life, like yours, was full of troubles and discouragement, yet because God was with him, he has hope. He says, “But you heard the voice of my pleas for mercy when I cried to you for help” (v. 22). And he ends with this call: “Be strong and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord” (v. 24). David is able to endure with courage because God is with him.
God is calling you to persevere in your suffering, but not by simply gritting your teeth. Persevering through suffering is only possible when you put your hope in the living God. He promises to come near to you, to be present with you, and to let you experience His goodness right in the middle of your pain and difficulty.
2. Personal failure.Your suicidal thoughts and feelings might be related to mistakes and failures. Is your hopelessness an attempt to atone for your sins, to punish yourself, to avoid feelings of shame? Perhaps you are so full of guilt and shame that you don’t want to be around people or even continue to live. Can you find hope when you’ve blown it so badly that you think you will never be able to hold your head up again?
The amazing thing about the Bible is that it is full of real people who made serious missteps—just like you. David wrote Psalm 32 after he committed adultery, got a woman pregnant, and then tried to cover things up by arranging to have the woman’s husband killed. You can read the whole story in 2 Samuel 11-12.
In Psalm 32:3-4 he vividly describes his experience of despair. Perhaps you are also feeling like this:
… my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.
For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.
David’s experience of guilt and failure comes partly from God and partly from his own conscience. But why is this psalm full of joy instead of shame? Because of what God has done for him in the middle of his nightmare of guilt. His joy comes from God’s forgiveness of him and from God’s promise to guide him (Psalm 31:1-2, 8).
Here’s someone, like you, who is living with terrible personal failure. But instead of meditating on his failures and turning his sins and mistakes over and over in his mind, he chooses to remember who God is. He knows the God who forgives. He trusts the God who promises to keep his eyes on him, who will personally instruct, lead, and counsel. So he ends like this, “steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord,” and adds a call to joy, “Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!” (Psalm 32:10-11).
What an amazing turnaround—someone who knows his sinfulness, but also knows God’s mercy, can be called righteous by the grace and mercy of God. You, too, can experience what David experienced. But to do so, you must seek this Lord. David described how he felt after his sin was exposed, but he hadn’t confessed his sins to God. His vitality drained away, he felt hopeless and lifeless. If that is how you feel, then do what David did—go to God with your sins and failures.
Here is a wonderful description of seeking God in the middle of your failure and guilt, David says, “I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin” (Psalm 32:5). Notice that David is turning to God with his failures—not to those around him. He doesn’t live in shame anymore because he is forgiven. He can hold up his head, even though everyone knows about his failures, because God is with him.
And then David gives the key to having God with him, “Therefore, let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you.” He knows that prayer brings him into God’s presence where he is safe from trouble, even the trouble he brought upon himself.
3. Failed dreams.You can also struggle with hopelessness when the thing that has given your life meaning is taken from you. Perhaps it’s a job you didn’t get, an unrealized life goal, or your children turning out a certain way. Whatever you have organized your life around, its absence can leave you feeling empty and despairing.
Perhaps you didn’t know how important your dream was to you until it didn’t happen. Now you are experiencing the hopelessness of a failed dream. But what does your failed dream reveal about where you find meaning? When what you have lived for is taken from you, it can feel like you are dying. You are in so much pain that suicide seems like your only alternative. But God has a better way. He will give you true, lasting hope that can never be taken away from you.
God says, in Psalm 33, that it is He who “frustrates the plans of the peoples” (Psalm 33:10). Later in the psalm he says why—because all those hopes are futile. “The king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue” (Psalm 33:16, 17).
These are things that people trusted in thousands of years ago. What you trust in—those things on which you built your life, your identity, your success—are different, but the result is the same. Anything you trust in besides God’s steadfast love for you is futile. When you put your hope in God’s love, He will deliver your soul from death (Psalm 33:18, 19).
Let the death of your dreams be the door into putting your trust in God’s love for you. He will be your help and shield. As you “trust in His holy name,” He will deliver your soul from death, from thoughts of death, and from trying to take your own life.
4. False hopes. Perhaps your suicidal thinking is not from hopelessness, but from false hopes. Dreaming about and planning your suicide is what brings you hope. You believe that killing yourself will bring about some wonderful answer or solution to your problems. If you have been deeply hurt by someone, you might see suicide as a way to make others suffer. You might hope that suicide will bring an end to your suffering and those you love will be better off without you. Or you might hope that your suicidal gesture will get you what you want—attention, love, or even a break from the pressures of life. But whatever your hopes are—“I’ll be in a place of peace,” or “Then everyone will know how much they made me suffer”—if they include suicide as a solution they are a false hope.
Suicide is never an answer. Two wrongs never make a right—don’t forget that suicide is a great wrong. If you have been wronged, please don’t think that suicide is the way to make that wrong better. God offers you true, living hope—not a false hope based on your death. Hope from God comes in the midst of evil and trouble and it is a hope that will never end.
Paul talks about true and living hope in the second half of Romans 8. True hope comes from knowing God as your Father and receiving His Spirit as a gift. Living as a child of God means that instead of responding to trouble by hurting yourself, you go to your heavenly Father for help. He gives you his Spirit to help you in your weakness and even teach you how and what to ask for (Romans 8:15, 16). It’s the Spirit of God that will teach you that your present sufferings “are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed” in you (Romans 8:18).
We live in a world where bad things happen. But you have received the best gift of all: the Spirit of life, the Holy Spirit of Jesus. You have been given the gift of a relationship with God now that will lead to an indestructible life forever. There is nothing in this world that can separate you from God’s love—not trouble, distress, hardship, or anything in all creation (Romans 8:35). God’s love will keep you safe, and it’s yours for the asking.
The resurrection—your reason for hope
How do you know that the promises God makes to you are true? How do you know that the living God gives true, substantial hope? Because Jesus defeated death when He died on the cross and rose again. Peter explains it this way, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, ” (1 Peter 1:3-4).
Jesus is alive. His resurrection is your guarantee that real hope can be yours. Your hope is not based on a vague belief that changed circumstances, time passing, or a new set of friends will cure how horrible you feel. It’s a living hope based on the physical fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because the resurrection really happened, your story will end in life.
The passage goes on to say, “to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.” When you have this living hope, then what you get out of life (your “inheritance”) won’t be destroyed or ruined by your troubles.
Papa Roach – Last Resort (Censored Version) This series of posts concerns the song “The Last Resort.” Amy Winehouse died today and it was a tragic loss. That really troubled me that she did not seek spiritual help instead of turning to drugs and alcohol. This post today will give hope to those we feel like […]
I am in the middle of a series on the Papa Roach song “Last Resort” which deals with suicide and then today I hear this sad story about Amy Winehouse. Inside Amy Winehouse’s troubled life With the news that British R&B star and tabloid target Amy Winehouse has died from as yet undisclosed causes, […]
Papa Roach – Last Resort (Censored Version) Today I am starting a series of posts on this song “The Last Resort” by Papa Roach. The band’s place in the pop music landscape was established with the release of their breakout single, “Last Resort,” which was quickly picked up by MTV and nominated for a “Best […]
President Obama and other politicians are advocating higher taxes, with a particular emphasis on class-warfare taxes targeting the so-called rich. This Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video explains why fiscal policy based on hate and envy is fundamentally misguided. For more information please visit our web page: www.freedomandprosperity.org.
Since the top 20% of Americans have roughly 91% of the total wealth, any solution to the budget deficit should call on those 20% to be responsible for AT LEAST 91% (I would argue 100%) of what it costs to balance the budget. To do otherwise would be a reverse Robin Hood, taking from the poor and middle class to give to the rich.
Posted from my Chamber of Commerce work computer on C of C time.
The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of this year, which means a big tax increase in 2011. Tax rates for all brackets will increase, the double tax on dividends will skyrocket from 15 percent to 39.6 percent, the child credit will shrink, the death tax will be reinstated (at 55 percent!), the marriage penalty will get worse, and the capital gains tax rate will jump to 20 percent. All of these provisions will be unwelcome news for taxpayers, but it’s important to look at direct and indirect costs. A smaller paycheck is an example of direct costs, but in some cases the indirect costs — such as slower economic growth — are even more important. This is why higher tax rates on entrepreneurs and investors are so misguided. For every dollar the government collects from policies targeting these people (such as higher capital gains and dividend taxes, a renewed death tax, and increases in the top tax rates), it’s likely that there will be significant collateral economic damage.
Unfortunately, the Obama Administration’s approach is to look at tax policy only through the prism of class warfare. This means that some tax cuts can be extended, but only if there is no direct benefit to anybody making more than $200,000 or $250,000 per year. The folks at the White House apparently don’t understand, however, that higher direct costs on the “rich” will translate into higher indirect costs on the rest of us. Higher tax rates on work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship will slow economic growth. And, because of compounding, even small changes in the long-run growth rate can have a significant impact on living standards within one or two decades. This is one of the reasons why high-tax European welfare states have lost ground in recent decades compared to the United States.
When the economy slows down, that’s not good news for upper-income taxpayers. But it’s also bad news for the rest of us — and it can create genuine hardship for those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. The White House may be playing smart politics. As this blurb from the Washington Post indicates, the President seems to think that he can get away with blaming the recession on tax cuts that took place five years before the downturn began. But for those of us who care about prosperity more than politics, what really matters is that the economy is soon going to be hit with higher tax rates on productive behavior. It’s unclear whether that’s good for the President’s poll numbers, but it’s definitely bad for America.
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner took the lead Sunday in continuing the Obama administration’s push for extending middle-class tax cuts while allowing similar cuts for the nation’s wealthiest individuals to expire in January. …The tax cuts, put in place between 2001 and 2003, have become an intensely political topic ahead of the congressional elections this fall. Republicans have argued that extending the full spectrum of tax cuts is essential to strengthening the sluggish economic recovery. Geithner rejected that notion, telling ABC’s “This Week” that letting tax cuts for the wealthiest expire would not hurt growth. …On Saturday, the president used part of his weekly address to chide House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio) and other Republicans who oppose the administration’s approach, saying the GOP was pushing “the same policies that led us into this recession.”
Senator Mark Pryor today made the following statement on the Senate floor to encourage his colleagues to end the budget gimmicks and move forward with a comprehensive debt-reduction plan as part of a debt ceiling solution. A portion of his statement is below:
The Gang of Six offers an alternative — a comprehensive roadmap that allows us to tackle the debt in a reasonable, responsible and fair manner. I applaud Mark Warner, Dick Durbin, Saxby Chambliss, Kent Conrad, Tom Coburn and Mike Crapo on this bipartisan effort. By leaving out political agendas, these senators, these statesmen, produced a plan to slash deficits by $3.7 trillion over 10 years. This plan follows the blueprint put forth by the fiscal commission following a year’s worth of study and collaboration.
In addition to an immediate $500 billion down payment, the plan puts everything on the table. It balances the need to reduce spending, adjusts entitlement programs and reforms our tax code. While I may not agree with every provision, I do like that it calls on every citizen to contribute to debt-reduction. It allows us to achieve measurable results without jeopardizing safety-net programs meant to protect the most vulnerable among us. Furthermore, it avoids gimmicks such as a constitutional amendment or cut, cap, and balance which offer a nice sound bite, but falls short.
I am hopeful a Gang of 60 will embrace this plan, and that we can include it as part of the final debt ceiling solution. Congress has created this cliffhanger moment. Americans and leaders all over the world are now watching. The question for Congress remains, will we rise to the occasion or will we fail?
Here are the real facts concerning the plan given from the gang of 6.
My colleague Dan Mitchell discussed the good, the bad, and the ugly in the deficit reduction plan released by the bipartisan group of senators known as the “Gang of Six.” As Dan noted, the plan is more of an outline and a complete assessment isn’t possible until more details emerge. However, the fact that President Obama immediately embraced the plan ought to tell proponents of limited government all they need to know.
Here are some random thoughts on the plan:
There’s nothing impressive about the “immediate” $500 billion in deficit reduction. That figure includes revenue increases, so it’s not even $500 billion in spending cuts. And I’m not sure why they say “immediate” when they probably mean that the reductions would occur over the next several fiscal years. The deficit alone for next year will probably be at least $1 trillion.
The plan promises about $2.5 trillion in spending reductions over 10 years. As I’ve been pointing out, $2 trillion in spending cuts isn’t a lot when compared to the $46 trillion the government is projected to spend over the next decade. See this Cato video for more.
Tax reform is fine; more revenue for the government is not. Transferring more resources from the private sector to the government is a loser for both economic and individual liberty. In addition, the plan’s requirement that tax reform “maintain or improve the progressivity of the tax code” would result in more Americans viewing the federal government’s spending programs as a “free lunch.”
My anti-tax credentials are beyond question: I equate taxation with theft. But I don’t like debt-financed spending any more than I like tax-financed spending. Had anti-tax advocates and Republicans put the same amount of effort into restraining spending during the Bush/Republican Congress years as they did in cutting taxes, we might not be facing the prospect of a large tax increase today. Unfortunately, I see little evidence that that lesson has been learned.
The plan does almost nothing to rein in the scope of federal government’s activities. It doesn’t seem to matter which party or ideological faction on Capitol Hill releases a plan — conservatives, moderates, and liberals all apparently assume that the federal government should continue doing everything that it currently does. Generally speaking, Democrats want more tax revenue to maintain an expansive government. Republicans talk about smaller government, but only a handful can articulate exactly what programs or functions they’d eliminate. It’s more common to hear Republicans blubber on about “reducing waste, fraud, and abuse” in government programs and “saving” the pillars of the welfare state (Social Security and Medicare) for “future generations.”
Our global military presence would make a Roman emperor blush and our Founding Fathers roll over in their graves, but there’s nothing in this plan to suggest that the military-industrial complex faces any threat.
In sum, if you’re hoping that debt reduction will be brought about through a reduction in the federal warfare/welfare state, you’re going to have to wait for a different plan. And the sad truth is that no such plan is going to materialize anytime soon – at least not one that will get through Congress and signed by the president. But look on the bright side – we’re not Greece! Not yet.
Congress’s dance with the debt limit can be confusing and, frankly, the details can be a real snooze fest for many Americans. Sometimes a little humor clarifies the absurdities of Washington antics better than flow charts and talk of trillions.
The 31-second video and accompanying infographic “The Debt Ceiling Explained” by Bankrupting America offers the facts, leavened with a dose of levity. The conclusion is serious, however: The country’s debt threatens economic growth, and spending cuts are the answer.
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It is obvious to me that if President Obama gets his hands on more money then he will continue to spend away our children’s future. He has already taken the national debt from 11 trillion to 16 trillion in just 4 years. Over, and over, and over, and over, and over and over I have written Speaker Boehner and written every Republican that represents Arkansans in Arkansas before (Griffin, Womack, Crawford, and only Senator Boozman got a chance to respond) concerning this. I am hoping they will stand up against this reckless spending that our federal government has done and will continue to do if given the chance.
What would happen if the debt ceiling was not increased? Yes President Obama would probably cancel White House tours and he would try to stop mail service or something else to get on our nerves but that is what the Republicans need to do.
John Brummett in his article, “By Pryor prediction, gang of 6 emerges,” Arkansas News Bureau, July 21, 2011 asserts: So what’s in this great new plan from the Gang of Six? Only about $4 trillion in real deficit reduction achieved by deep defense cuts, commission-delegated reductions in spending for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, […]
John Brummett in his article, “By Pryor prediction, gang of 6 emerges,” Arkansas News Bureau, July 21, 2011 asserts: So what’s in this great new plan from the Gang of Six? Only about $4 trillion in real deficit reduction achieved by deep defense cuts, commission-delegated reductions in spending for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, plugging […]
Today I read in the article, “Pryor backing bipartisan debt reduction plan,” Arkansas News Bureau, July 20,2011 the following words: Sen. Mark Pryor said today he supports a $3.7 trillion deficit-reduction plan unveiled Tuesday by six Republican and Democrats as a “carefully crafted balanced” way to avert a looming financial crisis. The Arkansas Democrat was […]
Elusive: Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin in a rare shot together at a beach party in the Hamptons
I was very interested in the first single that came out from Coldplay a few weeks ago, but this second single escaped my attention. Then this morning my son Hunter told me all about this second song and he said that something in the song may be talking about God.
I told you guys earlier that in 2008 Coldplay and Chris in particular was on a spiritual search. I predicted that it would continue. With the song “Major Minus” we have some very interesting lyrics. Take a look:
They got one eye on what you knew
And one eye on what you do
So be careful who it is you’re talking to
They got one eye on what you knew And one eye on what you do
So be careful what it is you’re trying to do
And be careful when you’re walking in the view Just be careful when you’re walking in the view!
Ooh-oooh-oooh
Ooh-oooh-oooh-ooh
Got one eye on the road and one on you!
Ooh-oooh-oooh
Ooh-oooh-oooh-ooh
Got one eye on the road and one on
They got one eye on what you knew And one eye on what you do
So be careful ’cause nothing they say is true
But they don’t believe a word
It’s just us against the world
And we just gotta turn up to be heard
Hear those crocodiles ticking ’round the world
Hear those crocodiles ticking (they go) ticking ’round the world
Ooh-oooh-oooh
Ooh-oooh-oooh-ooh Got one eye on the road and one on you!
Ooh-oooh-oooh
Ooh-oooh-oooh-ooh
Got one eye on the road.
She can’t hear them climbing the stairs
I got my right side fighting
While my left eye’s on the chairs
Ooh-oooh-oooh
Ooh-oooh-oooh-ooh
Got one eye on the road and one on you!
Ooh-oooh-oooh
Ooh-oooh-oooh-ooh
Got one eye on the road and one on you
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Here are the main points of the song.
1. Heaven is watching us constantly. (They got one eye on what you knew,And one eye on what you do)
2. We should be careful because what we do does matter to God. (And be careful when you’re walking in the view, Just be careful when you’re walking in the view!)
3. There are dangers in this world that you must avoid because they will eat you up.(Hear those crocodiles ticking ’round the world, Hear those crocodiles ticking (they go) ticking ’round the world )
4.Chris Martin’s plan is to keep one eye on the road ahead and one on the wife that he loves. (Got one eye on the road and one on you!)
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These interpretations are based on the assumption that Chris is building on the theme of his last cd. We will have to wait and see what the rest of the cd sounds like. Feel free to share with me your thoughts.
Here is an article I wrote a couple of years ago: Solomon, Woody Allen, Coldplay and Kansas What does King Solomon, the movie director Woody Allen and the modern rock bands Coldplay and Kansas have in common? All four took on the issues surrounding death, the meaning of life and a possible afterlife, although they all came up with their own conclusions on […]
Coldplay – 42 Live Coldplay perform on the french television channel W9. I wrote this article a couple of years ago: The Spiritual Search for the Afterlife Russ Breimeier rightly noted that it seems that Coldplay is “on the verge of identifying a great Truth” and their latest CD is very provocative. Many songs mention […]
CP I wrote this article a couple of years ago. Are Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin looking for Spiritual Answers? Just like King Solomon’s predicament in the Book of Ecclesiastes, both of these individuals are very wealthy, famous, and successful, but they still are seeking satisfying answers to life’s greatest questions even though it seems […]
Coldplay seeks to corner the market on earnest and expressive rock music that currently appeals to wide audiences Here is an article I wrote a couple of years ago about Chris Martin’s view of hell. He says he does not believe in it but for some reason he writes a song that teaches that it […]
Views:2 By waymedia Coldplay Coldplay – Life In Technicolor ii Back in 2008 I wrote a paper on the spiritual themes of Coldplay’s album Viva La Vida and I predicted this spiritual search would continue in the future. Below is the second part of the paper, “Coldplay’s latest musical lyrics indicate a Spiritual Search for the […]
Coldplay performing “Glass of Water.” Back in 2008 I wrote a paper on the spiritual themes of Coldplay’s album Viva La Vida and I predicted this spiritual search would continue in the future. Below is the first part of the paper, “Coldplay’s latest musical lyrics indicate a Spiritual Search for the Afterlife.” Coldplay’s latest musical […]
Coldplay – Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall (Official) The new single – download it now from iTunes at http://cldp.ly/itunescp (except in the UK, where it will be released to download stores at 12.01am on Sunday June 5th). Written by Berryman / Buckland / Champion / Martin / Allen / Anderson. Produced by Markus Dravs, Dan […]
On the Arkansas Times Blog on July 21, 2011, the link by Arkansas Media Watch to an article that was critical of Ronald Wilson Reagan (who by the way I named my son Wilson after).
Today’s Arkansas Democrat Gazette editorial is a lighthearted satire on Reagan deficit spending. It opens with the following quote from Saint Reagan himself:
“Governments don’t reduce deficits by raising taxes on the people; governments reduce deficits by controlling spending and stimulating new wealth.”
Excellent joke – I never thought Paul Greenberg had a sense of humor. Reagan of course never balanced a budget, on the contrary he was responsible for record deficits as high as 6% of GDP, almost tripling the national debt. Neither did he control spending – he presided over a 69% increase in federal spending, much of which went to the military.
The truth is very different. After adjusting for inflation, federal spending grew less than 1% a year during the 8 years Reagan was in office. Take a look at the video clip below:
President Obama unveiled his fiscal year 2012 budget today, and there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that there’s no major initiative such as the so-called stimulus scheme or the government-run healthcare proposal. The bad news, though, is that government is far too big and Obama’s budget does nothing to address this problem.
Actual spending cuts would be the best option, of course, but limiting the growth of spending is all that’s needed to slowly shrink the burden of government spending relative to gross domestic product.
Fortunately, we have two role models from recent history that show it is possible to control the federal budget. This video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity uses data from the Historical Tables of the Budget to demonstrate the fiscal policy achievements of both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
Some people will want to argue about who gets credit for the good fiscal policy of the 1980s and 1990s.
Bill Clinton’s performance, for instance, may not have been so impressive if he had succeeded in pushing through his version of government-run healthcare or if he didn’t have to deal with a Republican Congress after the 1994 elections. But that’s a debate for partisans. All that matters is that the burden of government spending fell during Bill Clinton’s reign, and that was good for the budget and good for the economy. And there’s no question he did a much better job than George W. Bush.
Indeed, a major theme in this new video is that the past 10 years have been a fiscal disaster. Both Bush and Obama have dramatically boosted the burden of government spending — largely because of rapid increases in domestic spending.
Last but not least, this video reviews the theory and evidence for the “Rahn Curve,” which is the notion that there is a growth-maximizing level of government outlays. The bad news is that government already is far too big in the United States. This is undermining prosperity and reducing competitiveness.
President Obama and Congress have agreed to cut $38 billion in federal spending, right? If you go by so-called “budget authority,” that may be true. But real spending cuts come when you actually cut real spending, not “budget authority.” Outlays in fiscal year 2011 will likely be considerably higher than last year’s outlays. That means the spending cuts advertised by President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner are laughably fraudulent.
The federal government is running massive budget deficits, spending too much, and heading toward a financial crisis. Without a change of direction in Washington, average working families will be faced with huge tax increases and a lower standard of living. In Downsizing the Federal Government, Cato Institute budget expert Chris Edwards provides policymakers with solutions to the growing federal budget mess. Edwards identifies more than 100 federal programs that should be terminated, transferred to the states, or privatized in order to balance the budget and save hundreds of billions of dollars. Edwards proposes a balanced reform package of cuts to entitlements, domestic programs, and excess defense spending. He argues that these cuts would not only eliminate the deficit, but also strengthen the economy, enlarge personal freedom, and leave a positive fiscal legacy for the next generation.
The White House is quietly encouraging the Reid-McConnell talks.
Meantime, there is talk of pandering to the tea party radicals in the unwieldy House by letting them pursue referral of a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution.
Ratification would take years. If enacted, such an amendment would amount to the same abdication of political responsibility to make wise and responsible cuts in spending as has been evident in the debt-ceiling debate.
It is obvious to me that the Balanced Budget Amendment is needed because of the “abdication of political responsibility to make wise and responsible cuts in spending” that Brummett is talking about and we have all seen for decades.
Abstract:Republicans in the House and Senate have announced that they will force votes on balanced budget constitutional amendments. While the Senate and House versions of the current BBA are similar, there are some important differences that Members of Congress and the American people need to understand. For example, the Senate version makes it more difficult to enact revenue-neutral tax reform, while the House version would waive its tax limitation in times of military conflict. How Congress resolves these differences could determine whether future Congresses and Presidents balance the budget without increasing taxes.
The President’s Budget
The House and Senate BBAs require that the President submit a balanced budget to Congress. This provision is subject to waiver during time of military conflict or war, but during times of peace, the President would be bound by the Constitution to submit balanced budgets to Congress each fiscal year.
The House and Senate versions differ on the constitutional requirements for the content of the President’s budget. Section 3 of the Senate version provides that two conditions must be met by the President’s submission to Congress. First, “total outlays do not exceed total receipts.” This provision is identical to the condition in Section 4 of the House version. Second, the Senate version adds a condition not included in the House version that “outlays do not exceed 18 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States for the calendar year ending before the beginning of such fiscal year.” The Senate version references “gross domestic product,” but the House version is silent on GDP.
There is one other significant difference. Section 2 of the House version caps spending at “18 percent of the economic output of the United States,” whereas the Senate version states (also in Section 2) that spending is capped at “18 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States” for the prior calendar, not fiscal, year. This provision will allow for different calculations with regard to how the 18 percent number is reached in both approaches.
In truth, both the House and Senate versions may become problematic. The House version is vague in that it does not explain who calculates “18 percent of the economic output of the United States.” The Senate version may not be transparent. Limiting growth in gross domestic product to the prior calendar year may essentially limit spending to less than 18 percent of GDP.
On average, growth in GDP has historically been at about 3 percent to 4 percent, which means that spending is capped closer to 17 percent of GDP for the current fiscal year. While capping spending at 17 percent of GDP might be desirable, it must be understood that “18 percent” calculated by looking back at a prior year’s GDP would result in a figure that is actually lower than 18 percent.
Tax Increases
The House and Senate BBAs are designed to make it difficult for Congress to use tax increases as a means to balance the budget. Once amended, the Constitution would contain a provision that would force a supermajority in both chambers to raise taxes on the American people in order to balance the budget, with certain exemptions in one version.
The House and Senate versions differ significantly on what measures would be subject to the tax limitation provision in the amendments. Section 4 of the Senate version subjects any measure that “imposes a new tax or increases the statutory rate of any tax or the aggregate amount of revenue” to a two-thirds vote of both chambers. Section 5 of the House version, however, merely states that “a bill to increase revenue” would trigger a constitutionally mandated two-thirds vote. The Senate language would encompass far more legislation and subject that legislation to a supermajority vote.
For example, if a measure were to create a new tax yet cut taxes commensurately in another area of the tax code, the Senate version would subject that to a two-thirds vote; the House version would allow that measure to go forward under the regular order of the House and Senate. The same would happen if one tax rate was increased and another was to be decreased in a revenue-neutral manner.
The Senate version would make revenue-neutral tax reform much more difficult to pass with a two-thirds vote, but it would be a strong deterrent for Members to cut taxes on one sector of society while raising taxes on another.
Making it more difficult to conduct revenue-neutral tax reform is a big concern for many conservatives. Consequently, some conservatives may need to rethink the specifics of this provision. Conservative revenue-neutral tax reform would raise taxes on those taxpayers who lose exemption and deductions and impose one rate that would initially take in the same amount of revenue.
The Senate language may deter using the tax code as a means to forward the cause of class warfare, but conservatives would be effectively abandoning revenue-neutral tax reform if they allowed the language in the Senate BBA to be sent to the states. There are serious trade-offs in this debate and consequences for the specific working of the House versus the Senate provision imposing supermajorities to raise revenues or taxes.
Also, if the provisions relating to a declaration of war or military conflict are satisfied by the House version, then the Congress may increase taxes through the regular order. The Senate version specifically makes the tax increase provision subject to a two-thirds vote waiver during time of war or military conflict. The waiver of a BBA during time of war or “military conflict” under the Senate version does not affect the application of the supermajority requirement to raise taxes; there is no such exemption in the House version.
Midnight in Paris The new film is a big improvement over Allen’s recent failures, but the script is not up to the idea.
Woody Allen’s new film, Midnight in Paris, is a marked improvement over recent failures such as Whatever Works and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which Allen indulged in strident liberal politics and incoherent nihilistic musings. Although its focus is different, Midnight calls to mind some of Allen’s most entertaining films, such as Play It Again, Sam, and Purple Rose of Cairo, stories about the power of film to enchant and transport. Here it is the past that mesmerizes. Allen’s latest aims high, and it is often arresting. But it falls short of its goal mostly because Allen’s script is not up to the task.
Midnight in Paris stars Owen Wilson as Gil, a successful Hollywood screenwriter with ambitions to be a serious novelist and nostalgia for the Paris of the 1920s, the Paris of Hemingway, Picasso, Cole Porter, Gertrude Stein, and T. S. Eliot. On vacation in the City of Light with his fiancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams), and her insufferable parents, Gil finds himself wandering the streets alone one night when an antique carstops and the riders invite him to join them. They take him to various locales where he meets his heroes from the Twenties. The rest of the film moves back and forth between his increasingly frustrating daily interaction with his fiancée’s family and his midnight rendezvous with the artists of the past.Although the snide caricature of conservatives does not dominate this film the way it did the dismal Whatever Works, it is still present. Inez’s parents, John and Helen, embody ugly Americanism. John accuses the French of being unreliable allies of America, while Gil gets off a few lines about the wisdom of French resistance to the Iraq War; later, John defensively praises the Tea Party. In an incredible scene, Inez scolds Gil for always wanting to take the side of the help and whines, “That’s why Daddy says you’re a Communist.” Meanwhile, John criticizes everything about the French — their politics and even their wine, which he compares unfavorably with California wines. If Allen had been interested in making John anything more than a straw man, he might have had him cite the famous Paris Wine Tasting of 1976, known as The Judgment of Paris, in which wines from a California winery, Stag’s Leap, did indeed beat out those from some of the top French wineries — a result that still riles the French.
The gratuitous and juvenile jabs at conservatives do not mar the film all that much, however, because Inez’s parents are not on screen very often and because Gil seems largely apolitical. Could Owen Wilson even begin to carry off a role as a politically engaged character?
The real attraction of the film lies elsewhere, in its re-creation of old Paris and in Gil’s interaction with the greats of the 1920s. The film celebrates Paris in the way Manhattan and many other Allen films celebrate New York. Gil encounters F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston and Alison Pill), Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), Cole Porter (Yves Heck), Pablo Picasso (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo), Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Salvador Dali (Adrien Brody), and Luis Buñuel (Adrien de Van). Gil is particularly attracted to the beautiful Adriana (Marion Cotillard), formerly the lover of Modigliani and Braque and now the object of the vying affections of Picasso and Hemingway.
There is much to appreciate in this part of the film, especially in the way Allen captures the vitality of the nightlife of the Twenties. Some of Gil’s exchanges work moderately well, as when he suggests to the surrealist filmmaker Buñuel an idea for a film about a dinner party from which the guests find themselves unable to leave (actually the plot of one of Buñuel’s most famous films). Dumbfounded, Buñuel keeps saying, “I don’t understand. Why can’t they just get up and walk out?” Gil’s conversation with Dalí is also amusing. Dali dramatically announces that he will paint Gil’s sad face, inside a rhinoceros, with a tear falling from Gil’s eye, in which he will paint the image of Jesus. Other conversations fall flat — for example when Gil tells T. S. Eliot, “Where I come from, people measure out their lives in coke spoons.”
That’s not the only thing about the nightly forays into the past that is ineffective. Stoll’s attempt to capture Hemingway’s daring bravado too often calls to mind Seinfeld’s J. Peterman. Then there are the problems with Owen Wilson, who plays the romantic-comedy part of this film reasonably well but is simply not credible as a writer who would be taken seriously by Hemingway and Stein. And if Wilson lacks the depth to persuade us that he is in their league, he is also not nearly as funny as one might have hoped. One is left wondering whether Allen himself might have pulled off the role.
Despite its obsession with serious writing, the film’s biggest failing is Allen’s script, which pales by comparison with its source material, Hemingway’s splendid memoir, A Moveable Feast. Hemingway’s book is full of rich, detailed, and humorous observations. Addressing the decline in his friendship with Gertrude Stein because of her quarrelsome manners, he describes her as coming increasingly to resemble a “Roman emperor, which was fine if you liked your women to look like Roman emperors.” In a sympathetic portrait of Fitzgerald, he manages to cast doubt on his famous drinking habits: “It was hard to accept him as a drunkard since he was affected by such small quantities of alcohol.” Little in the film comes close to those witty descriptions.
The highlight of the film is the performance of Marion Cotillard. As Adriana, Cotillard is warm, alluring, and self-deprecating; her devotion to a lost Paris exceeds that of Gil. The Paris she pines for is not the period she inhabits but the Belle Epoque, the age of the Moulin Rouge, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, and Degas. The film uses this parallel between Gil and Adriana to issue a warning about nostalgia, about the myth of a golden age. There is an alternative possibility here that the film never considers, namely, that the difficulty with recognizing the greatness of the present, particularly when it comes to cultural and artistic matters, is that we generally only recognize it after it has passed, in part by reference to the impact it has on future generations. In the period covered in the film, Hemingway and Eliot are not yet famous authors, and Fitzgerald has just published Gatsby.
And not even Cotillard can save the film from the flaws in its script, which is closer to the sort of Hollywood product one imagines Gil writing than it is to the sort of book he aspires to produce
Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below:
Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
On May 11, 2011, I emailed to this above address and I got this email back from Senator Pryor’s office:
Please note, this is not a monitored email account. Due to the sheer volume of correspondence I receive, I ask that constituents please contact me via my website with any responses or additional concerns. If you would like a specific reply to your message, please visit http://pryor.senate.gov/contact. This system ensures that I will continue to keep Arkansas First by allowing me to better organize the thousands of emails I get from Arkansans each week and ensuring that I have all the information I need to respond to your particular communication in timely manner. I appreciate you writing. I always welcome your input and suggestions. Please do not hesitate to contact me on any issue of concern to you in the future.
Government auditors spent the past five years examining all federal programs and found that 22 percent of them—costing taxpayers a total of $123 billion annually—fail to show any positive impact on the populations they serve.
More than $13 billion in Iraq aid has been classified as wasted or stolen. Another $7.8 billioncannot be accounted for.
Congress recently gave Alaska Airlines $500,000to paint a Chinook salmon on a Boeing 737.
The Transportation Department will subsidize up to $2,000 per flightfor direct flights between Washington, D.C., and the small hometown of Congressman Hal Rogers (R–KY)—but only on Monday mornings and Friday evenings, when lawmakers, staff, and lobbyists usually fly. Rogers is a member of the Appropriations Committee, which writes the Transportation Department’s budget.
Washington has spent $3 billionre-sanding beaches—even as this new sand washes back into the ocean.
The Defense Department wasted $100 million on unused flight tickets and never bothered to collect refunds even though the tickets were refundable.
Washington spends $60,000 per hourshooting Air Force One photo-ops in front of national landmarks.
Government spending doesn’t stimulate
All the official projections show rivers of red ink for years to come unless federal policymakers enact major budget reforms. Unless spending is cut, the United States is headed for economic ruin. We need to cut entitlements, domestic discretionary programs and defense spending, as Cato has detailed at 
The Daily Hatch 